Saturday, 4 October 2008

Richard Littlejohn

Malignant, malevolent, mendacious - this creep is a cancer on British life 

Last updated at 2:03 AM on 04th October 2008


On the day Peter Mandelson was forced to resign in disgrace for the second time, I can remember writing that he wouldn’t be out of work long. 

He’d get his reward either in Brussels or the House of Lords.

Even I didn’t imagine that one day he’d achieve both. Nor that it would be Gordon Brown who brought him back from Brussels and swathed him in ermine.

Yes, that Gordon Brown. 

The one who was so determined to get rid of Mandelson first time around that he was prepared to sacrifice two of his most trusted supporters to seal his sacking.

Peter Mandelson

The embodiment of all that is rotten about Labour: Peter Mandelson at Downing St

That would be the same Gordon Brown who has been foaming with hatred for Mandelson ever since he switched sides and supported Tony Blair for the leadership when John Smith died.

If Mandelson is the answer, what was the question? Imagine the scene inside Number 10 on Thursday night.

‘It’s bad news, Prime Minister. We’re trailing in the polls, the Tories have had a great conference, we look like getting hammered in the Glenrothes by-election, the country is bankrupt and trust in the Government is at an all-time low. We’re all doomed.’

‘Don’t panic, Darling. Salvation is at hand. Get Peter Mandelson on the phone.’

‘Brilliant, Gordon.’ The commentariat spent yesterday debating whether this was a masterstroke by the Prime Minister or the act of a madman.

 

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Trust me, this was the act of a madman. Brown came into office promising to draw a line under the spin, sleaze, dishonesty and division of the Blair years. It was always nonsense, but enough people fell for it. Yet he has now recalled into his Cabinet the living embodiment of all that is rotten and disreputable about New Labour.

Short of Call Me Dave making Jeffrey-Archer his new Tory Party treasurer, it is difficult to think of a more outrageous political appointment. 

Putting this odious, discredited creep back into one of the great offices of state is an affront to any definition of decency.

The only consolation to be drawn when Blair handed Mandelson a first-class ticket on the Brussels gravy train was that at least the most malignant tumour on Britain’s body politic had been cut out.

No one, with the possible exception of Alastair Campbell, has done more to poison the well of public life. Campbell was the sewer, but Mandelson was pure sewage.

If the average human body is around 70 per cent water, then Mandelson is 90 per cent spite. There has been no more malevolent influence in Westminster in a generation.

He was the Backstairs Billy of slanderous briefings against sworn enemies and so- called friends alike. 

  

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He delighted in doing his damnedest to ruin careers – including that of his new best friend Gordon Brown.

Mandelson gloried in his self-styled image as the ‘Prince of Darkness’. Except he wasn’t very good at it.

There’s a line in the movie, The Usual Suspects, that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince people he didn’t exist. 

But whenever one of Mandy’s diabolical schemes fell apart, as they inevitably did, the trail always led back to his door. 

As the posse rounded the corner, there was Mandelson with his trousers round his ankles and the smoking gun in his hand.

For a man who was said to be brilliant at operating in the shadows, he loved the limelight. His vanity, along with his capacity for choosing his enemies injudiciously, was his undoing.

Whenever Mandelson pulled a stroke, he couldn’t help boasting about it. Needless to say, in the febrile world of politics, his misdeeds always had a way of reaching the ears of those with a score to settle.

How else does he think we found out about his, er, indiscretions, those repeated ‘errors of judgment’ which were to cost him his Cabinet career not once, but twice? 

In the end, even Campbell worked out that Mandelson was a liability who had to be put down. 

But instead of consigning him to oblivion, Blair, to his eternal shame (not that he has any) sent him to Brussels.

So what, precisely, is it that the Prime Minister thinks Mandelson is going to bring to the party?

Laughably, it was being suggested yesterday that he has wide experience of ‘international finance’ on the strength of attending a few trade fairs .

Maybe Gordon is planning to put Peter in charge of the banking collapse. 

After all, if anyone knows about making money out of a building society, he does. Readers may remember that his first fall from grace, little more than a year after 

Labour achieved power, came after he was exposed for borrowing £373,000 from fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson and then lying to his mortgage lender to obtain by deception another £150,000 to buy a house he otherwise couldn’t possibly afford.

Anyone else caught in those circumstances would have attracted the attention of the fraud squad and probably ended up in prison.

Mandelson lost his job, was forced to pay the money back and sell the house – but he pocketed the £250,000 profit. 

(Brown demanded Mandelson’s sacking, but Blair wanted to keep him. Part of the deal was that Robinson - a wealthy businessman and Brown’s political benefactor, and Charlie Whelan, his fiercely loyal press secretary - a thorn in the side of both Mandelson and Campbell - would have to go, too. Gordon appeared to have no hesitation in throwing them over the side to get rid of the hated Mandelson. So much for loyalty.)

But with indecent haste and a total absence of shame all round, Blair brought Mandelson back into the Cabinet a few months later. 

Even then he didn’t learn his lesson. The Mail on Sunday discovered him up to his neck in a scam to avoid stamp duty on his new flat.

Gordon Brown had just introduced a higher-rate tax on purchases over £250,000. To get round this, Mandelson registered his purchase price as £249,000 – less than he actually paid – and ‘apportioned’ another few thousand on ‘fixtures and fittings’ to save himself £3,700.

It wasn’t illegal. But it was scandalous, immoral and disloyal. As a member of the Cabinet, Mandelson would have known the rules. But again, his ocean-going arrogance convinced him he would get away with it.

And while we’re on the subject, Mandelson has never satisfactorily explained where he got the money to buy a £2.4million home in London’s Primrose Hill on a salary of £160,000 – even with a modest family inheritance, profits from previous sales and a postal order from Australia. 

Maybe he got a mortgage from Northern Rock. Let’s hope he told them the truth.

Yet now he’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown obviously doesn’t see a history of tax avoidance, criminal deception and financial ‘errors of judgment’ as a barrier to a seat in the Cabinet.

The Prime Minister must also have forgotten all about Mandelson’s role in the ‘cash for passports’ scandal (which led to his second sacking) when he decided he was just the man to put in charge of the ministry of business.

It’s a stroke of genius. Mandelson has never met a wealthy businessman he doesn’t like – especially if said businessman is offering him a no-questions-asked personal loan or a substantial contribution to Labour funds.

In bringing him back, Gordon Brown has demonstrated yet again his contempt for probity in public life, his own lack of principle and has forfeited any remaining claim to a ‘moral compass’.

I used to wonder: what has Mandelson got on Blair?

Now, I wonder: what has he got on Gordon?

There has to be some rational explanation.

How much lower can Brown sink: Two Jags for Lord Chancellor, anyone?

The only question left is whether Brown’s government will last long enough for Mandelson to be forced to resign in disgrace for a third time.

Posted by Britannia Radio at 14:06